It turns out that I love people. Not always….I've got no love for anyone using or working the security line at the airport. But in general, one of my favorite parts of traveling is hearing people's stories. Yesterday Park and I played a fundraiser for EIES, an organization that provides free audio of daily periodicals to blind people all over New York and New Jersey. At the event, I met Herb, who is 83 years old and a native of South Orange, New Jersey. His wife is a reader for the organization three times a week. She goes into their studio in the mornings and reads the Wall Street Journal. Herb told me, among other things, that he used to own a small town general store that he had hoped to pass on to his son, but that he had sold when Walmart came in. That same son, he told me, was Student Athlete of the year at his high school in 1979. Parental Pride is apparently not dampened by time, and that strikes me as very cool.
At the airport in Newark, Susan at The USAir counter spent at least 15 minutes scraping old routing bar codes off of Park's guitar. She was very concerned that it might wind up in Calgary or LA! While she knelt and scraped the stickers with a pen, we chatted about her killer curly red hair, which she said she had hated as a teenager. She wanted to look like Cher, and instead she was all Janis Joplin. I told her it was completely rock & roll, and I'd tried everything to get her look. Before we left for our gate, she showed me a picture of her with her hair straightened. Luckily, there was no line in Newark at noon….
The show was lovely…we played an acoustic set of my tunes and a few covers after EIES presented their awards, and I took a rare opportunity to play a Springsteen cover in the land of The Boss…At dinner, we sat with Frank Scafidi, our host, and his extended family, all of who are from the New York/New Jersey area. They had textbook New York accents, which made Park's Southern accent seem even stronger! When we left, Park told Frank that his family reminded him of his, only with different accents. :)
So here's what I Iearned: New Jersey really is the Garden State. It was beautiful; leaves were turning every shade of brown and red and yellow….and the people were colorful and unpretentious. Just how a garden should be.
At the airport in Newark, Susan at The USAir counter spent at least 15 minutes scraping old routing bar codes off of Park's guitar. She was very concerned that it might wind up in Calgary or LA! While she knelt and scraped the stickers with a pen, we chatted about her killer curly red hair, which she said she had hated as a teenager. She wanted to look like Cher, and instead she was all Janis Joplin. I told her it was completely rock & roll, and I'd tried everything to get her look. Before we left for our gate, she showed me a picture of her with her hair straightened. Luckily, there was no line in Newark at noon….
The show was lovely…we played an acoustic set of my tunes and a few covers after EIES presented their awards, and I took a rare opportunity to play a Springsteen cover in the land of The Boss…At dinner, we sat with Frank Scafidi, our host, and his extended family, all of who are from the New York/New Jersey area. They had textbook New York accents, which made Park's Southern accent seem even stronger! When we left, Park told Frank that his family reminded him of his, only with different accents. :)
So here's what I Iearned: New Jersey really is the Garden State. It was beautiful; leaves were turning every shade of brown and red and yellow….and the people were colorful and unpretentious. Just how a garden should be.